Stan, that is just laughable. I'm sorry, but it is.

So predictable. Anything that might just possibly inconvenience those who are so self-centered in their ways, must be wrong, according to them. So it always is.

Today, after burning buckets of gasoline and choking down a grassed steak at Ole's (IYKYK) while watching the Snows and the Cranes, about 5 weeks early along the plate, I'm lounging in Western Nebraska, enroute to California to pick up a puppy. If you didn't think anthropogenic climate change (ACC for short) was for real, it will be by the time I get home. Yes, climate changes and always has. But never has it changed so fast with so much at stake, and so little ability to cope.

It amazes me what such self-centered people can convince themselves of, if it strikes at their lifestyle. But what's new? Humans said we could never cut down all the old trees, or catch all the cod, or shoot all the passenger pigeons and bison, etc. But here we are. And we found so many other ways to add to that toll even without our precious guns. All that CO2 and methane (remember the cows - I have posted a biomass graphic for terrestrial mammals in the past - stunningly depressing).

Did you know that one of the more interesting side effects of CO2 is that it fertilizes plants to the point that there is now about 2x as much biomass (where there are wild plants) than there used to be, preindustrial? Sounds good, eh? Sadly, there is not 2x as much nutrients in that vegetation. So there is a lot of it, but it is increasingly poor quality. So poor that many things (not subsidized cows of course), are having trouble eating enough to make it by. Animals far down the food chain are inarguably (for rational folk, not some of you irrats) are declining. Things like insects and other arthropods, birds, etc. This could be as much from having a tough time choking down enough grub to reproduce sufficiently, to the more traditionally suspected and indubitably guilty, pesticides, pestilence, drought, heat, habitat loss, etc.

The bottom line is that long ago, we passed the point of no return, and it will become much grimmer before it gets better. If you have kids, their lives will be much more impacted than yours, but we see that already and it is not only climate. 8 billion people just won't float on this little bitty rock. They never will.

There is an ecological argument for the "burning down the house" mentality of you ACC deniers. But it is really weak, and really grim, and you really wouldn't like it. I am not nearly as optimistic as Jimmy, but I applaud him for it. It is not that we could not fix it, only that we WILL not fix it.

Carry on.

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BrentD, (Professor - just for Stan)

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]